Succor

An expansion of a short review originally published at Intfiction.org on May 8, 2025.

My overwhelming feeling after playing Succor was frustration. I related a lot to the protagonist's situation; I've been in that kind of headspace many times before, no energy or motivation to do anything besides lie in bed. The game starts just when you finally do drag yourself out of bed because you need to eat. But almost immediately, I found the work's portrayal of living with mental illness overly simplistic. Early text spells out your goal:

Hunger drags you awake despite your wishes and you reluctantly get out of bed. It's already almost the afternoon, and you're starving. [...] Time to find some food.

But initially, your only options are to explore your apartment... and clean it. *Deep* clean it. Fridge, sink, microwave, stove--you can scrub them all to shining, before you've had even a bite to eat! This really clashes with the "too depressed to get out of bed until hunger literally drives you to it" protagonist the game set up, and simply makes no physical sense to me--I, at least, would literally be unable to do all that work on an empty stomach.

The other aspect I found grating is that at certain points you're presented with a choice of coping mechanisms that are clearly framed as either healthy or unhealthy. Pick the healthy ones, and you’ll feel better. Ah, I wish it were that simple in real life!

One aspect of the game that did work for me was the sections where the protagonist reflected back on various memories tied to food and cooking, giving us a picture of their life up to this point, including family, school, and what led to their current bout of depression. I found these parts much more effective than the “mental illness simulator” aspects.

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/21/25
Playtime: 1hr, Demon Hunter(2), Healthy Appetite(1); 2 playthroughs

If there is a category of reviews I struggle with, it is for trauma- or therapy-based IF. Don’t get me wrong, IF is a TREMENDOUS tool to use to build empathy, sympathy, and commiseration for people that can probably use a bit of daylight in their lives. It’s just, if I am not afflicted with the particular concerns of the work, my takes are always a bit suspect. The BEST I can do is approach from an empathy perspective, and even then, I am subject to debilitating blind spots in my engagement.

This is a work whose protagonist struggles with crippling, depressive self-doubt compounded with emotional family trauma. The nature of the work is to explore the protagonist’s apartment, struggle to accomplish daily tasks against a backdrop of near-insurmountable motivation gaps, and experience shadowed flashbacks when considering takeout menus. Ok, rereading that last sentence, that is way more glib than I intended. Food and food preparation are integral touchstones for the protagonist, so the conceit is not unjustified.

Moment by moment it works pretty well. The ‘marketing’ descriptions on the menus are particularly well done, and the contrast between them and their less idealized memories is wryly impactful. If you probe the menus deeply enough you are confronted with representative (Spoiler - click to show)mental demons that are evocative, nicely metaphorical and attractively illustrated. These are all very strong aspects of the work.

The interactivity is where I could feel my blind spots encroaching. On the one hand, atop the screen are three attributes that seem to gauge the player’s effectiveness and mental state. Not only did I not detect an impact to those, I did not seem to be able to modify them in a predictable way. In particular, if I deliberately chose the most (Spoiler - click to show)unhealthy responses, the stats remained resolutely unchanged. Nor did that seem to influence future possible choices.

Further, there was little to no back pressure when selecting the most (Spoiler - click to show)optimistic, constructive choices. Given the dramatic language of the inner monologue, this felt.. too easy? This culminated in gameplay that unveiled (Spoiler - click to show)more food menus if you just kept cleaning, well beyond a threshold even nominally healthy me would be capable of!

Another dissonant tone for me was the breadth of the menus (not all of which I encountered during one playthrough!). A wide variety of ethnicities is represented in restaurants. All of which can trigger childhood memories of family preparation? That is a VERY cosmopolitan family! The language used to describe this SEEMED to lean into handed-down legacies, but were so broadly applied I went from experiencing a SPECIFIC family story to a muddied, ‘wait, what is their heritage now?’

So, all of these things kept me at a bit of an arm’s length, until I considered it in retrospect. What if this was NOT intended to be a rigorous recreation of mental struggles? What if, instead, this was a determinedly encouraging work, aimed at players commiserating with the protagonist? The message was not ‘this is what it feels like’ but ‘you CAN do this, even if it doesn’t feel like it.’ ‘No matter how bad your past choices, you can make a different choice next time.’ The work was simultaneously acknowledging that life experiences can suck and put nearly unsustainable pressures on us, while offering that it is still in our power to grapple with it. We need not be defeated even when it feels like we have been. What I initially read as ‘reductively easy problem solutions’ became instead a cheerleading of some kind, offering hope. And maybe even a bit of wish fulfillment to sweeten the pot.

The blurb for the work seems to echo this take for me, and elevated the whole thing beyond my clinical ‘realism’ knee jerk. The fact that a work of subtle optimism and support can be wrapped in (and punch through!) a graphical package of such evocative darkness is kind of… wonderful.

Horror Icon: Leatherface
Vibe: Wrestling Demons
Polish: Smooth
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project I would be forced to acknowledge that I was pretty unprepared to engage this subject matter. I would focus, then, on maybe sharpening the protagonist’s ethnic heritage a bit. Pick a few each runthrough to center a family experience on and steer other menus to a different, less immediate shading. I say this in the full acknowledgement that it could double the word count!

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

Note: This review was written during Spring Thing 2025, and originally posted in the intfiction forum on 18 April 2025.

Now trying this collaborative piece where you’re haunted by the past, and uncovering old demons, as you explore your apartment, and try to find something to eat.

I liked the graphics, though turned off the sound, which distracted me too much from reading. Thanks to the authors for the ability to turn off text delays, and also for the comprehensive content warnings at the start of the game.

As you play through you uncover old takeaway food menus from the past, just as you are getting hungrier and hungrier ironically. I think the idea is to explore the various dishes on there, and revisit past memories as a result. I’m afraid that I didn’t really want to explore all the menu options. They were often too painful, and I just wanted to search the apartment for food (I can be extremely straight-line thinking at times!).

In the end although I found some rice and cleaned the kitchen and put some spiced water cooking on the hob, and something vanilla in the microwave oven (I also cleaned elsewhere) I still couldn’t find food to eat. So didn’t reach a totally satisfactory ending. Though my character was able to work through a lot of their demons.

This is a game with many endings. I achieved one, but didn't get any of the 7 achievements.

This game uses extensive music, styling, and art to provide a dark and (literally) demonic atmosphere. You play as someone in a messy and cluttered apartment. Looking around, you find reminders of your life as well as huge messes.

Any attempts to get things done result in demons appearing that attack you. You can confront them in negative or positive ways (I laughed when one potential response to a demon attacking you was to doom scroll, but it makes sense since that's often a real-life response to stress).

You have a strong connection to food; there are a ton of take-out menus and each item gives you a flashback or an emotional connection.

This worked for me as a 'depression simulator', and I found it relatable and having an overall uplifting message.

As someone who has struggled with a lot of negative emotions, I suppose I could relate to the player in multiple ways.

You walk around the house, looking for ways to occupy yourself (mostly by cleaning some parts which really need it) and getting a wave of negative feelings every now and then, which you will need to make a decision on how to handle. There are also plenty of restaurant menus within the house, showing how even food can relate to difficult or heavy memories. That said, I would not recommend this to people facing similar situations (and the game also carries a similar warning at the start).

The music and sound is minimal, but they are well-chosen and help to convey the theme. The art is also similarly minimalistic at some parts, but I think it also does convey the lens in which one views things under darker circumstances.

I felt that this was a pretty thought-provoking entry. That said, do heed the content warning on the front page.

It's a game about depression. You wake up hungry in your dirty, cluttered mess of an apartment, and have the option to try to fix things, or not. Menus and environmental details provide flashbacks that tell you about the protagonist's life and how they got to this point. You also encounter metaphorical demons representing your emotional struggles.

The art is minimal and evocative, while the classical piano music set me on edge. I associate classical piano music with misery for various reasons and don't like it much. I suppose it's ultimately fitting for this game. The music was quiet enough to not distract from the text, either.

Though fictional, it's a personal kind of story. I imagine the player's response will vary depending on their own experiences and how much they can relate.

A lot of people go through situations like this, I guess, where you're not sure how to pull together the motivation to continue on. In the end, you either do or you don't. The protagonist seems to have no friends or family to talk to about their struggles, so they're left to deal with it on their own and the outside world doesn't really care whether they succeed or fail. It's a harsh fact that when you're alone and at your lowest point it doesn't even seem to matter whether you do the "right" thing or not, and whether you suffer a "victory" or "defeat" in the game people call "managing your mental health", one day will still become another, and you'll still have to keep addressing your own needs, trying to stay above water.

The TV channels evoked this the most for me. The cynical channel descriptions get at the soullessness of modern media that worships profit and lauds the perfect life you'll never have:

Shots of bright beaches, breathtaking vistas and luxurious resorts comprise the majority of a snazzy travel show. The host benevolently devotes 45 seconds of the hour-long program to visiting an orphanage in the impoverished exotic destination before a change of location to dig into a seven-course meal.

An ad filled with high-pitched singing, nauseatingly bright colors and boggle-eyed creatures entices you to buy toys branded off a popular children's show.

A news segment features footage from a nearby homeless encampment, while a scrolling ticker along the bottom of the screen screams about the stock market's record highs.

You find a cooking show featuring a celebrity chef using ingredients most folks would need to mortgage their home to afford. The host oohs in awe.

An elderly couple stare at each other in gentle adoration while a man breathlessly rattles off a list of medicinal side effects.

An ad for a charity comes on, filled with images of starving children and soft, tearjerking piano music.

You find a documentary about space tourism and watch for a few moments as the world's wealthiest leave the planet. You change the channel before they can return.